Elizabeth sibiliaPhD Candidate, graduate Center, CUNY

Biography

Elizabeth Sibilia is a PhD Candidate who specializes in human geography in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her work focuses on political economy, maritime geographies, and development in South Asia. Her PhD research studies the history and development of shipbreaking in Bangladesh. Utilizing a multi-sited ethnographic approach the projects heavy reliance on empirical data grounded her analysis in economic geography. She has written academic scholarship on the political economy of shipping and shipbreaking and has used her own visual documentation as a way to discuss global networks, scales of risk and crisis, and the historical development of maritime regulations and production of oceanic spaces in both public conversations and academic settings, and in more popular writings. Her research has been supported by a Knickerbocker Award for Archival Research, Institute of Human Geography Grant Program, American Institute of Bangladesh Studies, and her writing was supported by a Graduate Center Dissertation Year Fellowship.

Elizabeth recently completed two years as a Visiting Student Researcher in the Geography Department at the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently a Lecturer in the Geography and Global Studies Department at San Jose State University. Prior to these positions she was a Teaching Fellow at City College, CUNY between 2012-2014, an Adjunct Instructor at the Macaulay Honors College Instructor, College of Staten Island in the Department of Political Science and Global Affairs and an Instructor at Cambridge College, a where she taught methodology classes to working adults studying to be public school teachers.

Prior to 2009 Elizabeth was a Visual Artist based in New York City. She received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2006, and in 2005 she received the Graduate Award of Excellence for her research and work on container ports, ocean transportation, and the global supply chain. Her work was shown nationally in gallery's and project spaces between 2006-2009. At RISD she also held the position of Instructor of Record and taught undergraduate courses in Painting during Wintersessions.

She received her BFA from the New School For Social Research and studied Painting and Art History at Parsons School of Design in Paris for one year. Upon graduating she worked as a Painting and Drawing Instructor in the Parsons Pre-College Academy and Summer Intensive Studies Program. Between 2001-2004 she worked as a Teaching Artist in New York City public high schools for the New York based non-for profit Working Playground Inc. She held a four year assignment at East Side Community High School and worked with Humanities and Social Studies teachers to integrate the arts into the curriculum.

She has an unwavering passion for education, and commitment to, public school students and the public school system and philosophy at all stages of education.